


said the spider to the fly

by mutterandmumble



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Complicated Relationships, Explicit Language, F/F, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Pre-Relationship, Stream of Consciousness, heavy handed metaphors, something approaching, unedited, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29421918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutterandmumble/pseuds/mutterandmumble
Summary: The knocking doesn’t stop. The voice starts to wind up into a shout so you stand with a huff, feel your muscles protest as one and ignore them as you sweep over to the door in your jeans and long sleeved shirt that you may or may not have changed in the past day or two- you can’t quite remember- with your flyway hairs pinned back and out of your face because your hair is in that horrible not-quite short but not-quite long stage and you haven’t gotten around to giving yourself a haircut yet. You look like a mess. You also couldn’t care less, so you fling the door open with a flourish and glare up (and up and up) at the person standing behind it.“Nav,” you hiss through half-gritted teeth. “What thehelldo you want.”Or: in which Harrow has a visitor, nobody knows how to cook, andsomethingis better thannothing
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40





	said the spider to the fly

**Author's Note:**

> Cw for repeated mentions of physical pain, descriptions of overwork and general feelings of disconnect
> 
> Anyways, this is a vent fic, through and through, which means that it’s also wildly self-indulgent and very rambly and probably a little strange, though I’ve never been the best at gauging that kind of thing. Maybe a little OOC though I tried to preserve as much of their personalities and their dynamic as I could. I figured it was high time I wrote a fic where these two actually kissed though, and so here we are!
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy!!

To begin, some necessary background: 

It is Friday night. You haven’t quite finished all of your work yet- most things, you’ve found, don’t think twice about inflicting themselves upon your already meager stores of free time- and you are hunched so far over your laptop that your shoulders are brushing up against your ears. Your back is aching something fierce and there’s a persistent itch at the back of your neck, a dull scratch up beneath your consciousness that won’t leave you alone no matter how you try to bargain with it (and lord do you  _ try,  _ do you offer it tomorrow if it will give you today, do you promise that you’ll ache and burn and break as much as it would like so long as you can have a short few moments of relief first), and when it becomes clear that you will likely be made to endure this for a good long while you make a last-ditch effort for some peace by taking a shard of willpower, making it sharp as can be, and then carefully, carefully burrowing it into your spine.

You are trying to see if you can’t pry the hurt out manually, through want and want alone. This sort of thing has never worked for you before but you’re curious by nature and have the self-preservation instincts of a car gone hurtling down a highway, so you’ve learned to love your fool’s errands and learned to live by the try, try again; you’ve committed, and you’ve never really learned how to let things go (when you were eleven you nearly failed a math test and you haven’t known peace since, when you were twelve Gideon lost your pen and you  _ still _ haven’t forgotten, so on and so forth, forever and ever until the end), so you have to at least  _ try. _

So you concentrate, focus on the pain and feel it swell and subside beneath your skin over and over like the rolling of the tide, and you take that willpower and stake it through yourself and then you wait and wait in the silence of your room. Nothing happens, like you knew nothing would. You know all about making a good hypothesis- you’re studying a science- and you know that failure is a necessary part of experimentation, so you figure that all of this is no real loss because your body will hurt again tomorrow, and you can try again then if you would like. For now you simply give a long and winding sigh and then you push back from your laptop and stretch your arms over your head, feel the burn of the burden that lives inside your head and the burn of your work ethic as it mourns this thirty-second break and then the much more literal burn of your muscles as they protest your burden, your work ethic, this life you’ve forced yourself to fit. 

This is all very dramatic. If Gideon were here, she would tell you that you’re being very dramatic. 

You do not want to listen to Gideon, not even the Gideon that lives in your head, so you push her voice down and out and then resign yourself to hurting with a slightly impatient aggravation, because really,  _ really,  _ this shit again? Can you not catch a fucking  _ break _ ? This is getting old and maybe, maybe, maybe, one of these days you will get old as well, and maybe by then you’ll have to read fewer textbooks. One can hope, one can dream. 

But regardless. To continue, some more background, just as necessary but given with no small amount of resistance: Your name is Harrowhark Nonagesimus. You are twenty-one years old, and you are pursuing a degree that will allow you to pursue more degrees that will allow you to pursue a job that will allow you to pursue a career that will allow you to exist in a way that doesn’t hurt you. The sort of career where you can stand and sit as you please so that you can keep your back from straining itself, the sort where you can stop the muscles in your arms from taking up arms against you, the sort of career that lets you sleep at night. It’s an inside joke you’ve got with yourself- get the job to work for  _ you,  _ see how it likes  _ that,  _ give it a taste of its own medicine, which- incidentally- you will be legally qualified to do once you’ve finished all your schooling.

Anyways, you are pursuing this very first degree from the inside of your apartment, which is approximately the size of a shoebox and still smells faintly of the bleach you used on every available surface when you first moved in because one cannot pursue much of anything at all if they’ve been killed by the colony of cockroaches living in the back corner of the closet. This is a fact of life: you can’t do much living if you’re dead. To elaborate: if you are dead you are not also alive, unless you are wandering around in a haze inside of your shoebox of an apartment and the person standing outside your door is kind enough to leave you be without observing you one way or the other, thereby forcing their perception of reality onto your (already sore, already tired) back and making your not-life, not-death a hell of a lot more difficult.

To recap: there is life, and there is death, and people die if they are killed. To recap: you think that you should probably go to sleep soon because your thoughts seem to have devolved into a pseudo-intellectual froth of complete and utter bullshit, and as much as you would like to believe otherwise, that is not exactly conducive to any sort of work. 

So there you are, sitting inside of your apartment, and you are sitting on the couch in front of the coffee table, and you are sitting straight up and down inside of your body. Your body is your body is an act of violence. So it goes. Your back hurts like hell, and someone is knocking at the door. 

The piece of motel art that you bought to hang on the wall- chosen solely because it’s ugly as fuck- is titled to the side, and the you can hear the sounds of the world muffled through your walls, and someone is knocking at the door. The light from your laptop is burning your eyes, equations pushing up against your head and whining for you to look at them, look at them,  _ look at them, _ and someone is knocking at the door. Incessantly, consistently, loud as can be- soon enough the knocking is joined by a voice, and you groan and put your head in your hands and wonder if you can’t just disappear into the air right here and now and save you all the trouble. 

The knocking doesn’t stop. The voice starts to wind up into a shout so you stand with a huff, feel your muscles protest as one and ignore them as you sweep over to the door in your jeans and long sleeved shirt that you may or may not have changed in the past day or two- you can’t quite remember- with your flyway hairs pinned back and out of your face because your hair is in that horrible not-quite short but not-quite long stage and you haven’t gotten around to giving yourself a haircut yet. You look like a mess. You also couldn’t care less, so you fling the door open with a flourish and glare up (and up and up) at the person standing behind it. 

“Nav,” you hiss through half-gritted teeth. “What the  _ fuck  _ do you want.” 

“Hey, Gloom Mistress. Miss me?” Gideon Nav says, giving you a smile that may or may not reach her eyes. You can’t quite tell because Gideon’s got her sunglasses on, the big ones that spread halfway across her face and that she seems to think make her look cool. They do not. You have told her this. Her hair rustles in the soft breeze, russet-red strands tossed about wildly by the wind, and she must’ve come from the gym because she’s dressed in workout clothes but then again you don’t think that Gideon owns any clothes that  _ aren’t _ workout clothes, so she could’ve been anywhere, really- there’s a whole wide world out there after all, and as you squint against the sunlight and listen to the cars rush past on the highway below you realize that you’ve forgotten that. You’ve whittled yourself down to your work, as you are so wont to do; you don’t think that you’ve been outside in days.

“So!” Gideon starts as she pushes past you and into your apartment, not giving you a chance to speak as she pushes those horrid sunglasses up and off her head with a drama that you know for  _ certain  _ to be practiced. “What the fuck have you been doing in here? We all thought you were dead.” 

Necessary background, as a means of exposition: you have known Gideon Nav for your whole entire life. You do not have a single memory without her in it, whether she’s front-and-center or lurking on the peripherals, and in all this time of knowing each other the two of you have developed a bizarre sort of give-and-take, a reliance that’s mutual and politely ignored by the both of you. If asked, you hate her, and you hate her with every fiber of your being, all the aches and pains and everything in-between; if left to your own devices, your feelings tend to lack any rhyme or reason or rhythm at all. You resent this. You like it when you know what is going to happen next, and you like it when things are under your control, and where Gideon is involved neither one of these is a given. 

More necessary background, which is never to be spoken of again on threat of death itself: The two of you have kissed twice, once years ago and once in the past four months, and you have yet to discuss either instance and you doubt that you ever will because communication- whether healthy, unhealthy, or just wildly passive-aggressive- isn’t exactly a cornerstone of your relationship. Now the true tragedy of this situation is that you can read her like a book regardless, because again, again you’ve known her forever; if she were to finally grow sick of you and up and leave, to give up on whatever it is that she’s playing at and walk out the door and never think of you again, you would be incapable of understanding yourself. You have never been a person who does not know Gideon Nav, and so you do not know who you would be- who you  _ are _ \- without her. 

But there are other, more concerning things at the moment, because rather then do you both a favor and leave you the fuck alone it seems as though Gideon has decided that your apartment is her apartment, and she is going to treat it as such. She’s thrown her bags down on the counter of your tiny kitchenette and is staring judgmentally at all two of the pans that you own, freely making herself at home in  _ your  _ kitchen in  _ your  _ apartment without giving you any sort of say in the matter. She takes up more of the small space than you ever have; everything looks just to the left of proportional, when she holds it, like it’s shrunk. You resent her for this. She’s cut all your kitchenware down to size, and if  _ that  _ wasn’t bad enough she’s filled up one of those pans with water (which is probably not the best idea as you’re not entirely sure where it came from) and flicked on the stovetop, easy as can be. She puts the pan down on it with a clang and watches as a spray of water flings itself headlong towards the ceiling, and then she just sort of shrugs. You figure it is best not to mention this.

She leaves the pan and then starts on the frantic open-and-shut of the few cabinets you've got, stumbling around like a bull in a china shop as you just sort of stare on in exhausted confusion, until she gives a loud HA and raises- behold- the single spoon she’s found aloft. It’s all very dramatic. She stands there for a moment, bright in the midst of the sunlight streaming through the window before she jerks back into movement, taking two steps over to the stove and then just sort of prodding at the water for a bit. 

You watch. You watch. You think that your back hurts; you think that your head hurts, you think that your stomach hurts, and you think and you think and you watch and you watch. You watch as Gideon messes with the knob of the stove, and then you remember with a start that  _ neither  _ of you knows how to cook, actually, due largely to your lives being composed of nothing but a series of increasingly fucked-up events, and that snaps you back to reality fast enough for you to lunge forward and wrap your hand around her wrist before she goes and burns you both down to nothing. She looks down at you in surprise, those gold-brown eyes of hers widening as her face twists and turns into some expression that you have no desire to interpret. 

“What are you doing,” you say flatly. Her wrist flexes beneath your hand. The spoon clatters down to the counter, and somewhere in the back of your mind you find it in yourself to be grateful that it wasn’t over the water because frankly it would be just like Gideon to come over here to- well, to do whatever it is that she’s trying to do, and end up sending you both to the hospital. It’s happened before. It will happen again. You are so sick of things sometimes, and the way that they grow easy and lilting and the same all throughout, the way that you can’t escape them whether you wanted to or not, that it feels like you can hardly breathe. 

“Cooking,” she snaps back, and though her voice is somewhat harsh she makes no attempt to move away. Rather she looks right into your eyes, and when you’re this close you can feel her heart moving beneath her skin, the press and flutter of her pulse up into your thumb. This is none of your business, so in the interest of maintaining a professional relationship, you pretend that you feel nothing at all.

You wait a beat for this to sink in, for your body to catch up and stop it’s sudden flush. You are unsuccessful. You ignore this as well.

“Cooking,” you repeat, still with no inflection (you don’t have the time, and you don’t have the energy), and then you narrow your eyes and scowl at her the best that you’re able, letting some of that suspicion peek through at the curve of your mouth and the tilt of your chin. She knows you as you know her; she understands within the second. “Neither one of us can cook. So, again: what are you doing? And don’t try and lie to me, Nav. I’ve got work to do, and I can’t do that if you burn the place down.”

Her face twists again. She looks down at you with an expression that you can’t describe, and you feel the strangest, strongest desire to go hide beneath a rock somewhere and never show your face ever again. This is not useful, so you push it down, down, down and focus back on the matter at hand. 

“Look,” she says, letting some of that old antagonism slip back into her voice, which is a relief to you, as this is a worn-old dynamic and it fits like a sweater that you found in the back of the closet; not the most comfortable thing on earth, but at least you know it well enough to anticipate where it’ll pinch at you. “Nobody’s seen you for like, a  _ week _ . If you keep pulling this kinda shit then Cam’s gonna make you give her a key so that she can organize your fridge or whatever it is that she does to keep nerds like you from getting scurvy.”

You blink, taken aback, and your back twinges and your joints ache and your head pounds away at your skull with all the frightened fury of a last-ditch effort. As if all at once you notice the empty hollow of your stomach and the stuck-together dryness of your throat, the clothes half stuck to the contours of your skin and your skin half-stuck to the contours of your bones. Your hair, which seemed such a non-issue to you earlier, now feels oily and sweat-soaked and matted to your forehead; you do not feel good, and you knew this, and now you are very, very tired and it’s hitting you all at once, lead sinking into your limbs and head rolled heavy to one side as your muscles protest the simple act of standing. You’re giving out on yourself, and you feel it in the aches and pains, in the pins and needles and sharp stabs that prickle at your insides, unrelenting. Exhausting. 

You do not show any signs of this, because you have your pride if nothing else and that’s one thing that can’t be taken from you no matter how close to death you feel. So instead of admitting that you should lie down, maybe, you say, “I was working. I’m busy.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gideon snorts. “We  _ all _ know that you were working. You literally don’t do anything else, and it’s the only thing you talk about when you leave this apartment for anything that isn’t isn’t fucking  _ school.  _ We get it, Nonagon-” and you hiss  _ don’t call me that,  _ and she ignores you “-you don’t do anything else and you don’t want to do anything else, god, alright, we  _ get  _ it but Harrow-”

She stops, and you scowl at her because she’s gone and called you by your  _ name,  _ which means that now you have to  _ listen.  _ It’s a cheap trick, but effective; she knows you, so she knows where you are weak. Most things in life are a double-edged sword. 

“You’re gonna get yourself killed, you know,” she says, very frank. 

You still. You stop. You say nothing at all, and as you stand there and scrabble for something to say, she reaches over and fiddles with the knob on the stove again in one last act of defiance. Then she looks at you, and you look at her, and nothing moves at all.

No longer background, but rather a description of the here and now:

The light streaming through the window has burst across your skin, red-orange and pockmarked with dust; the bags on the counter are slowly spilling over each other, and each crinkle-brush of plastic against plastic feels like a rock to your head; there is a wilted remnant of a cactus sitting on your windowsill, one with a tiny, shriveled flower perched at the very top of what was once its stem, wobbling in time with the creaking of the floorboards as your upstairs neighbor goes about their life, peacefully oblivious to the tension of the moment; Gideon is in your apartment, and she is looking right down at you, and you are alive whether you like it or not. 

You will not tell her that you rather  _ don’t  _ like it, because you do not have it in you. So instead you turn your concentration to your fingers where they are still wrapped around her wrist, and you take the parts of yourself that you do not care for and you shove them down deep and you look up at her. 

You are still close; you are still too close. 

She huffs out a sigh when you don’t say anything (and some small, panicked part of you thinks that she knows exactly what it is that you’re not saying, that you twitched an eyebrow or twisted your mouth wrong and she’d seen everything you were and are and will be laid out end to end, clear as can be) and then she swoops down and kisses your forehead. 

Your muscles tense. You feel sick, like something inside of you has gone and rotted down to the bone, to the sponge-soft marrow beneath even that, and then she looks at you for permission and when you do not pull away, she leans down and presses another kiss against your mouth. Slowly, carefully, like you’ll break if she moves wrong. Slowly, carefully, like she’s not quite sure where to put her hands. You kiss back, of course, rise up onto your toes and push forwards, find your hands sliding up, up, up her arms, settling on either side of her neck, too far from the scoop of her shoulders to be comfortable and not light enough to be romantic. You kiss back, and you feel the rise and fall of her chest against yours and the hitch of her breath somewhere in her throat and the warmth of her skin. You kiss back, and you think that this is just like the first time; you kiss back, and you think with a wry humor that this is just like the second. 

Necessary background, at an inopportune time: the very first time that you two had kissed it had felt exactly as you had expected it to. You had known Gideon well enough by then to know that she would be warm, to know that all the skin and blood beneath her shirt made its home over sharp, defined muscle, to know the height and strength and feel of her better than you knew yourself. That very first time you two had kissed had been when she was seventeen to your rough-and-tumble sixteen, and she spent most of her time lording that year (and her considerably greater height) over you with all the confidence of someone certain that they’ve already done all the growing that they’re going to do. You had made a habit by then of waking up in the morning to anger worked soft between your teeth, seething beneath your piles of blankets and clothes and skin and sweat with all the quiet rage of someone who couldn’t quite reconcile themself with their body or their brain or their arms or their legs or their head or their hands or, or,  _ or- _

So that very first time you kissed you had been in your room, and you had been in your body that was far too big and far too small and far too _much,_ and she had pressed her body close to yours (regardless of the razor-edge, regardless of the sharp points) and she had pressed a fumbling kiss to your mouth, and it had been warm. Not much else- it was too much too quickly, and you were so close that you couldn’t stand it for more than a second- but you remember that it was warm. You remember that _she_ was warm.

The second time was ill-advised, a stolen moment in the dead of night after stress and grief had gone and fractured something deep inside of you, something fundamental, and you had wanted nothing more than to feel close to another human being- to feel  _ close _ , to feel  _ real _ , to feel  _ something.  _ That kiss did not end well. You two had ended up fighting like you haven’t fought in years. So while you may not talk about that first time, you do not  _ think _ about the second, and this is something that you’ll live and die or live-die by, if you must. 

This third time though, this third time that you kiss has that warmth with less of the edge, that closeness without the reflex that pushes your body up and out of itself. Her hands are on your waist and the sun is still in the sky, hung right outside your window and it is like your skin is like the water in the pot is like your burden and your work ethic in that it burns and burns and burns. You have a body and you have anger and you have an ache in your stomach and your spine, and as Gideon is so close to you and Gideon knows you so well that she may as well be a part of you, she has these things as well. This is unfortunate, but it is also undeniable. 

Also unfortunate, also undeniable: the stove is hissing. You did not notice this at first because you and Gideon are still pressed close and your hands have finally slid over her shoulders and to her back, head tilted to the left as you kiss and kiss and the stove hisses some more. Your eyes, which had slipped shut at some point during all of this, snap wide open on instinct and then focus themselves on the stovetop, on the water. 

“Gideon,” you say, and she hums and kisses you again, and you kiss back and then you say  _ “Gideon,”  _ again, more insistent this time, and when she goes to kiss you this time you pull back and you say: “Griddle, the fucking  _ pot _ .”

She blinks at you, eyes hazy. And then whatever spell it was that you two had found yourselves under for those two minutes snaps itself in half and she scrambles back and away from you, giving a strangled yelp as she slaps at the buttons on the stove. You watch on, impassive, as she skitters around, and take stock of yourself: you are still tired and you still hurt, and there is still that burn in your stomach, though you’re not sure that that will  _ ever  _ go away. You are still yourself, though now you are a version of yourself that has kissed Gideon Nav  _ three  _ times, and you are not quite sure how to feel about this. You realize- to your immediate and visceral horror- that you wouldn’t mind if this version of yourself shedded itself quickly and without resistance for one that has kissed Gideon Nav, four, five, six times.

Oh well, you think, taking that revelation and putting it somewhere that (with any luck) you will never have to see it again. No use in crying over something that isn’t going to happen- you’re better than that. You’ve learned your lesson, and you’ve learned it well, so as you watch Gideon panic over the stove, you take all the feelings that she’s gone and stirred up and you out them back in their places, careful as can be until there is nothing left and you can look at her without wanting to burst into flames. Easy, easy. 

“SHIT,” Gideon yelps as she flails at the boiling water with a spoon and then: “SHIT. FUCK. I CAN’T COOK HARROW WHY DID YOU LET ME _COOK_ HARROW FUCKING- DON’T JUST STAND THERE, HELP ME, HELP ME-”

You lean over, calm as can be, and give the knob on the stove a sharp turn. The water continues to boil with even more vigor than before, and as you stand there and stare and Gideon starts swearing loudly and at length, you realize that you just made it  _ hotter.  _ Whoops. Well, it is what it is. Life is as fraught and dangerous as- as- well, you don’t fucking  _ know _ , you haven’t had the time to think this one through because you’re trying to keep boiling water from splashing all over the fucking  _ floor.  _

Between the two of you, you are eventually able to turn the stovetop off and contain the water with only minor casualties (the stovetop, the ceiling, your collective pride), and then you stand there in the silence of the aftermath, neither one of you able to look the other in the eye. The kiss is anything but forgotten; the kiss is hanging between you, and it’s  _ tangible _ . You do not know what to do to dispel it, so instead you cough once. Then twice, then three times, and then you say, “What the fuck were you trying to make, anyways?”   
  


Gideon bristles, crossing her arms. “Well, I don’t fucking  _ know.  _ I’ve never done this before, but in all like, the books and movies and shit, people come over and then they like, make tea or food or something like that, I dunno, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

This is accompanied by various gestures of increasing urgency. You are very confused. 

“So you were making-” you stop and tilt your head, endeared despite yourself. “...tea?”

“No,” Gideon replies immediately, uncrossing her arms. “I was boiling water.”

You are both silent for a beat. And then the absurdity of the whole situation hits you, and you let out a snort that is  _ almost, almost  _ laughter, and Gideon looks much more smug about than she has any right to be, so you school your features again as quickly as you’re able until you’re glaring again. 

“What was in the bags then?” you ask, genuinely curious. 

“Uhhhh,” she says, and then sort of coughs and sort of looks away, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “Crackers, mostly? Some ramen. A pack of skittles but that’s for me actually, so I’m gonna just-” she starts towards the bags that are still lying on the counter. Then she stumbles over nothing and knocks those bags over onto a heap on the floor, and you realize in one big flash as she stands there and rapidly between them and you in visible, visceral horror, that the soft, seething mass that lives in your stomach and lives in your spine has cooled itself to something sleek and smooth, like tempered steel. Which is to say: 

It doesn’t hurt. 

And that realization rolls on over you like a wave as Gideon tries and fails to pick up the bags in what may be the most overblown, ridiculously comical scene that you’ve ever seen outside of movies, and before you know it a laugh has bubbled its way up from your throat and out into the open. Gideon gives a high pitched wheeze of her own, dropping the eclectic mismash of items (you see an energy drink and a bag of candy corn and what looks to be a tabloid, and  _ lord _ , what exactly was she trying to  _ do _ ?) right back to the floor, and another laugh bullies its way out of you followed by another and another and another. 

And you keep on laughing, with Gideon scrabbling around in your kitchen and the memory of that third kiss carving its way through your body with all the subtle graces of a fever, settling as something so hot to be searing somewhere in the back of your mind. The light from your laptop where it sits over on the coffee table is fighting a losing battle against the sky, which has long drifted off into the sort of soft purple twilight that’s speckled with cotton-candy clouds, and you are inside your lit-up apartment and you are being lit-up by memory, and through it all you laugh. And you laugh and you laugh and you laugh. 

Some necessary background, one last time:

For all that you are and all that you’ve been, you haven’t laughed like this in  _ years _ .

**Author's Note:**

> please consider leaving a comment if you enjoyed!! I love hearing from you guys!!!


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